Monday December 3, 2012 3:34 pm

Marketing Samsung Galaxy Devices visualized

There's a high cost for making Samsung Galaxy devices. Horace Dediu, from Asymco, breaks down the math and visualizes them into nifty graphs. There's no question that the mobile Galaxy line embedded with Android has been a success for the South Korean conglomerate but, apparently, it comes at a cost of marketing the products. Sales, general and administrative (SG&A), is part of the equation being extrapolated for the results for past trends from 2009 to 2012. In other words, Samsung basically spends roughly four times more on marketing than its most rival mobile competitor. A good marketing example is seeing a payed advertisement for the Samsung Galaxy S III at the top of the Twitter Trend. Or those now infamous "Next Big Thing is Here" commercials basically trolling Apple customers at a line for a faux launch.

Another takeaway: Apple is not the marketing machine we once thought. In actuality, they spend the least compared to other major companies and, more importantly, their competition in the same time peroid. Perhaps, Apple is more effective at branding, frugal with spending and more proactive in the marketing of their products. So, don't ever listen to someone's excuse that the reason why Apple and their products are successful is solely dependent on their marketing, since the stats say otherwise. There's a good chance that the detractor is more influenced by the marketing excuses of their brand of choice.

Personally, I have always said that good products will market and sell themselves; which is why the Apple Stores are the secret sauce of tangible marketing. The hands-on experience and impressions are undeniably unmatched in the industry, the lust factor is 100. The opposite to that is like walking into a carrier shop or a third brick and mortar store and looking at the non-functional demos that are mysteriously abused beyond recognition. Thus, others are now trying to mimic Apple's approach of having a vertical control of thier brand, setting up shop and selling the products themselves.